Brand new 17 reg car left ON TOP of Mercedes in footage showing unbelievable 'pile-up'

THIS is the moment a brand new 17 reg car was left ON TOP of another vehicle in a bizarre but very literal "pile-up".

James Johnson's dashcam caught the remains of the three-car accident that left a Kia Sorento perched on top of a Mercedes E-Class, tearing up the entire bonnet of the latter like a tin opener.

The incident, which Mr Johnson originally mistook for a car transporter because of the way the vehicles were piled up, occurred on the M69 near Leicester on Friday 3 March - just two days after the 2017 number plates were released on 1 March.

Father-of-one Mr Johnson, 31, believes the driver must have been on their way home from the showroom.

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The footage even shows an emergency call-out worker taking pictures of the bizarre scene, which Mr Johnson believes could have been because he had "never seen anything like it before".

As I approached it I thought it was a car transporter due to the way they were positioned

Mr Johnson - Witness

While Mr Johnson says the positioning of the vehicles left many drivers perplexed, he believes the cars could have ended up like that after the Kia momentarily lifted up and went into the back of the tanker - and the Mercedes ploughed into the back of it at this exact moment.

Mr Johnson, from Nottingham, said: "I had been stuck in bad traffic for around an hour on my way home from work so I guessed there must have been an accident.

"When you're sat in traffic you're just expecting to see some minor shunts, but you don't expect to see anything like this. It was almost worth the wait and being late home for.

MERCURY

The strange accident saw the a Kia Sorento perched on top of a Mercedes E-Class

"But at first as I approached it I thought it was a car transporter due to the way they were positioned.

"It looked like one had gone into the back of the other and ended up underneath it. Quite how it had managed to do that though I have no idea. I wouldn't have thought it was possible.

"Even one of the rescue team was taking pictures of it - he seemed shocked himself. I bet he had never seen anything like that before. People had their mouths open.

"The response team were probably wondering how to deal with it, it was quite a sight.

"When I spotted it was a 17 plate car I couldn't believe it. It could only be a couple of days old as they were only released on March 1.

MERCURY

'I thought it was a car transporter due to the way they were positioned', says Johnson

"It must have been someone's brand new car that's been ruined, quite possibly on their drive home from the showroom.

"I don't know for sure how the Mercedes has done that but my guess is that perhaps the Kia went into the back of the tanker and lifted up a fraction on impact.

"Then the Mercedes came along and went into the back of the Kia at the exact moment that its rear end was lifted a little from the ground, so it pushed up over its bonnet. It was just perfectly bad timing.

"The whole bonnet of the Merc was pulled back. It must have caught something and ripped it backwards like a can opener. It was a right mess."

The planning engineer does the drive daily as he commutes from his home in Nottingham down to Coventry for work and while accidents are fairly common, he has never seen anything quite like this.